On 2013-11-04 10:48, AceExplorer wrote:Speaking of the Bum's books, I bought extra copies that I'm going to take down to the local office supply store, have the spines cut off, and have the books made into spiral-bound versions. I think this would be convenient for bar-top use.

Or I could just take the spineless versions, scan them into PDFs, and keep them on a laptop or tablet PC for reference at my bar. (Ah, but paper is just so much easier to handle and flip through. And it's not as "expensive" to spill drinks onto a book than onto a tablet PC...)

I have been taking pictures of the recipes with my phone and keeping them in a Cocktails folder in my pictures. I already use Tiki+ a lot, so this works well. I use my phone in the bar for music, so it's always there.
_________________Announcing Swank Pad and Crazy Al's Molokai Maiden!

Inspired by the challenge put forth in this thread I made the Aurora Bora Borealis as well last week. The lime juice and coconut cream combo is one that had to grow on me, but it was the Bum's Coconaut that totally sold me on the merits of that unusual pairing. I think this is a tasty drink, but imo it lacks the balance and the punch of the Coconaut. I cheated a bit and subbed El Dorado 5 for the light rum to put a little more flavor depth into the rum combo. And Destro I agree that the orgeat can be increased a bit in this one.
_________________"If you keep on drinking rum, the world will soon be quit of a very dirty scoundrel."
Robert Louis Stevenson

On 2013-11-03 08:54, Destro100 wrote:It took a long while but I finally feel ready....to tackle every drink in the tome of gratification that we know as Beachbum Berry Remixed.

Mr Destro100, I salute your endeavour

In a similar vein, I am working my way through the Tiki+ iPhone app to make a home menu of the best drinks.

At first I tried the 'names you know' & now am working more on the ingredients I think work well together. Seeing as you have already mentioned 2 drinks not in the Tiki+ app, I may have to work my way through Beachbum Berry Remixed afterwards.

I have currently had 39 of the 150ish. My general rule is to have one 'new' drink followed by what I fancy once or twice a week - I would estimate it has taken approx 8 months so far.

Out of those I have tried, 18 are good drinks that I'd make again & again - that's not to say that the others are bad, just that those 18 came together within 2 or 3 tries. Others haven't come together quite as well in 10 or so tries!

I'm by no means an expert but from my experiences I would advise:

1) Switching rums. Quite a lot of drinks work fine with the cheap stuff, others work better with the expensive. Some drinks benefit from switching between white/gold, gold/dark or dark/aged of the respective rum styles.

2) Double the non alcoholic ingredients in some drinks & all the ingredients in others (like in your Aurora Bora Borealis)

3) Compare drinks to one another. Some drinks have interesting similarities, in looking at the drinks history you can determine which was the 'parent' & which was the 'child' in that particular 'drink family'.

I started with the Tiki+ app as well and made lots of great drinks from it.

Regarding some of your suggestions:

1) Switching rums. I do this all the time when I'm entertaining or drinking something I already have. With this experiment, I want to stay pretty close to the original recipes. I definitely stick with mid to top shelf products.

2) Doubling ingredients. For the sake of this experiment, I'm only willing to double the entire recipe for a larger drink. I don't want to change proportions till I've gone through each drink. When I entertain, I do raise the non-alcoholic ingredients by small measure.

3) Compare drinks to one another. This comes naturally, Let's face it - the combination of rum, lime, and passionfruit appears in too many drinks to count.

FYI, I started with the Grog Log many years ago. Back in olden times, ingredients were hard to find. I spent years getting Marischino Liqueur! And then Intoxica came out. And more books. I was working my way through them.

Some drinks I did not make because I did not have the ingredients. Maybe not that night even. I would mark the page with an X if I could not make it, or a grade if I had. This became more and more difficult to manage.

Now I had a tool to help me find the drinks I had never made and I could make based on what was in my bar! By grading a drink, I knew I had made it. It also now adds a new layer to the daunting task of making all the recipes, other people's grades. At some point, you'll find there are an awful lot of losers in those books and you'd like to try something a bit better tonight. Now you can see what others think and decide that way.

My suggestion for this process is to double every recipe if you have a partner to share. Getting it right is easier when the measurements are not so small. Plus two tastes get better consensus. And the Bum is pretty heavy handed with the lime juice. Over and over the recipes were better if I halved the lime juice. Use your judgment. I often cut it and them tasted and decided whether to put it back in by the recipe or not. Pouring drinks down the drain that are to sour to drink sucks.

Agree with Swanky about the lime juice: often too heavy (ex:Shrunken Skull). In all the years since the Grog Log debuted, though, I've never poured a drink down the drain...I've 'fixed' them, upped levels of booze, mixers.... it's developed into a skill which comes in handy, esp. when there's company to serve on the fly. Maybe I'm just cheap

Also, do not buy a bottle of Stroh just to make that one drink. Use the most fowl tasting liquor you have as a sub and never look back. Cachaca maybe, Mezcal. Anything. Don't waste that money on Stroh just to make that. And the Jaguar? Really?

On 2013-11-15 08:45, Swanky wrote:Also, do not buy a bottle of Stroh just to make that one drink. Use the most fowl tasting liquor you have as a sub and never look back. Cachaca maybe, Mezcal. Anything. Don't waste that money on Stroh just to make that. And the Jaguar? Really?

I'm amazed at the negative reactions to Stroh rum. I recently tried it for the first time, and I found it to be an interesting and unique addition to my bar -- in a good way. It is a spiced rum and better than many others on the shelf. Since it is so unique, I have had friends taste it and none had negative reactions to it. I bought it to accurately make the Frankie's Tiki Room drinks from their new book. So is the negative reaction to Stroh in any way related to, perhaps, not recognizing it as a spiced rum? Or is it just seen as a bad rum? For now, I'm taking the negative reactions with a grain of salt and I'm going to have some fun with it. I have recently acquired a bottle of the Stroh 60 and also a bottle of the Stroh 80. Waste of money? Not if I'm having fun with it, and so far I am. The Frankie's Tiki Room folks seem to be quite successful with it, so I'm gonna follow in their footsteps a bit and see how it works out. I'm not married to it - could end up never buying it again after I run out - but I am going to give it a good road test in the context of the Frankie's recipes. I do not anticipate using it to make variations of classic Mai Tais, Zombies, etc. but simply explore more of the Frankie's drinks. Their cocktails, and the beautiful photographs in their book, are generally big hits with my guests.

On 2013-11-15 11:46, AceExplorer wrote:It is a spiced rum and better than many others on the shelf.

I meant "better" in the sense that spiced rums generally are not very exciting when I taste them neat. Strohs is so different without being flat-out crappy that it surprised me. Other spiced rums generally do not surprise me. And, hey, I gotta give the inland Austrians a chance for their inventiveness in getting up the guts to distill this stuff in such a traditionally non-rum part of the world.

The Aussies are actually surprisingly fond of their dark, strong rums. In addition to Stroh, Bundaberg Rum from Queensland has a huge following. I have also previously read (can't find the reference now) that Australia is the number one export destination for Coruba.
_________________"If you keep on drinking rum, the world will soon be quit of a very dirty scoundrel."
Robert Louis Stevenson

Beachcomber's Gold (Chicago)
Not a tiki drink at all - at least not in flavor. More reminiscent of a classic prohibition-era cocktail. Bitter yet subtle. Not inspiring, yet not disappointing. I kind of knew what to expect as I compiled the ingredients. If I hadn't been privy to the ingredients beforehand, and had been served this drink at a proper tiki-bar, I may have been let-down. Not quite sure if this drink calls for a repeat.

I couldn't do the ice-shell. No shaved ice and crushed didn't work well